Page 82 of October
I ran a hand over my face, jaw tight.
"And it wasn't just about the marriage. It was about... being loved byher.The way she sees the world. The way she seesme,even when I couldn't see myself clearly. I think I tied my worth to that without realizing it."
I looked up at the ceiling for a second, then back down.
"When she said she wanted out, it wasn't just the relationship ending. It was a mirror shattering. I didn't know who I was without her love."
My voice dropped to a murmur.
"So yeah, I didn't say 'I love you.' I said 'you love me,' because I needed to hear it like a lifeline. Because without it... I didn't know if there was anything left of the person I thought I was. Because her love... that was the one thing I counted on. Even when I was distant. Even when I shut down or missed the mark completely. Even when I failed to show up for her in the ways she needed most. I thought it was still there, quiet, tucked away somewhere. Waiting for me to finally get it right."
I paused.
"I think... I didn't know how to fight for her without also fighting to keep myself from disappearing."
Dr. Mireille turned to me with the same calm, measured tone.
"October. Let's try a different moment. What did you want to say each time Thomas said,'Don't wait up, I have work to do'?And what did you actually say?"
"I kept saying okay. I stopped asking when he'd be home. I stopped waiting up. The shift was so gradual I barely noticed it—until one night, I realized the dinner table had grown cold long before the food ever did."
She looked up then, first at Dr. Mireille, then at me. I didn't look away.
"What I really wanted to ask was...do you still love me?Do I still matter to you?Did you stop caring and just never tell me?But I didn't. I bit my tongue every time those questions came close to the surface, because I didn't want to be that woman: clingy, needy, too much, too heavy to hold. I didn't want you to see me as a burden. I didn't want to be the thing you sighed about on your way out the door. So I kept quiet. I convinced myself I was being mature, patient, understanding. That you'd notice on your own. That you'd justknow."
She let out a breath, and I could tell how hard this was for her. Every word felt like it was being pulled from a place that had been locked for years.
"And then..." Her voice trembled just slightly and turned to our therapist, "I stopped believing him. That's the part that really broke me. One day I just realized that I didn't think it was about work anymore. I didn't think it had been for a while."
I closed my eyes for half a second, and then opened them again. The guilt was immediate. Heavy. Deserved.
"But I never said it," she went on. "I never confronted him. I didn't want a fight. I didn't want to accuse him of something if I didn't have proof. So I kept pretending I believed it. I smiled. I nodded and I started to resent him."
Her voice was shaking now. Mine would've too, if I had it in me to speak.
"What I wanted to say was it hurts when you disappear like that. It makes me feel like I don't matter. But by then, silence had become a second skin. Not out of peace but out of exhaustion. Out of fear. And that's when I really started to disappear, from myself, from him, from the life. Like I was clinging to a version of him I had invented just to survive the version I got."
The room felt frozen. I didn't breathe. She looked back at me then, and what I saw there knocked the wind out of me. Not anger. Not bitterness. Just... heartbreak. The kind that had lived in her so long, it had settled into something quieter.
She finished, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Instead of all of that what I actually said was nothing. I just turned off the light and went to bed."
Dr. Mireille gave a small, solemn nod. "This is where we begin. With the things you were too tired, or scared, or numb to say. We'll build from here."
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Love, Translated
She sat across from us, as steady as always, her expression open, warm, waiting, like someone gently coaxing a sealed door to unlock.
"I want to try something different today," Dr. Mireille said, folding her hands in her lap. "I'd like each of you to recall a moment when you felt most loved by your partner. A moment that stayed with you because of how it made you feel."
The air shifted. My thoughts flicked through years like cards in a deck—holidays, hospital rooms, the birth of our children, the blur of ordinary Tuesdays. Then something surfaced. Not dramatic. Not grand. Just... lasting.
"I think I have one," I said softly.
She gave me a small, encouraging nod. "Go ahead, October."
I glanced at Thomas, and the memory warmed me from the inside. "It wasn't anything huge. It was after Alice was born. I'd been up all night, rocking her until my arms felt like they belonged to someone else. The baby wouldn't settle, and I remember sitting on the edge of the bed, hair still damp from a shower I couldn't even recall taking. I felt... scraped thin. Almost hollow. Like every part of me had been poured into her, and there was nothing left."
